


and I may yet fall apart

by wentwxrths



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enjolras and Cosette Fauchelevent are Siblings, Ladyhawke AU, M/M, Mutual Pining, Sort Of, Urban Fantasy, sometimes being an oblivious idiot gets you cursed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28417629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wentwxrths/pseuds/wentwxrths
Summary: “And you, Apollo?” he asked without turning. “How was your night?” The bird flapped its wings casually, readjusting its perch, and let out a soft caw.“Mmm. Actually, I strongly disagree,” Grantaire told it, just for the sake of consistency.---In which Enjolras and Grantaire figured out their feelings just a little too slow and must now deal with the consequences. Meanwhile, Marius runs afoul of a love spell.
Relationships: Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	and I may yet fall apart

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry if the magic system isn't entirely clear yet. I know there are a couple terms in here that aren't addressed, but I promise everything will be explained shortly :)

Bright morning light streamed through the open window and fell across Grantaire’s face as he blinked the sleep out of his eyes. At first, he thought the glare was what had wakened him. Then he registered the sound of a fist pounding on his bedroom door. He let out a long groan.

“Coming,” he croaked, passing a hand over his eyes. Apparently, whoever it was heard him, because the knocking stopped. Grantaire reveled in the peaceful silence, though he knew it wouldn’t last if he didn’t get moving. Still, he gave himself a slow count of ten, which stretched into twenty, then thirty. He allowed himself to feel the heavy warmth of the blankets around him, the relaxed muscles which hadn’t yet remembered the tension of the waking world. Finally, with a herculean effort, he forced himself upright into a sitting position. There was a shuffling sound off to the right, and he smiled as he stretched out his tired muscles.

“And you, Apollo?” he asked without turning. “How was your night?” There was no reply, of course. Grantaire braced against the bitter chill as he pushed aside the sheets. He leaned over the side of his bed to grasp at a wad of thick material lying on the floor. Seizing it in his grip, he pulled on the deerskin glove before even getting dressed. A moment later, a familiar weight settled on his hand as a hawk alighted there. The bird was a stunning creature, with powerful dark wings and a reddish-golden underside. It flapped these wings casually, readjusting its perch, and let out a soft caw.

“Mmm. Actually, I strongly disagree,” Grantaire told it, just for the sake of consistency. He managed to keep his glove hand steady as he got achingly to his feet.

“Ugh, what did I even do last night?” he complained. “I feel terrible.” The hawk turned its beak up, away from him. _Whatever you did, it’s your own fault,_ the gesture seemed to say, even though it wasn’t. Not strictly. Maybe he was reading too much into it.

The muffled tapping of an impatient foot warned him that whoever had come to wake him was still waiting on the other side of the door. A frankly pointless charm on the mirror mounted thereupon warned him it was Courfeyrac.

“Alright, well, let’s see what today’s crisis is.” He opened the door.

The young glamourist straightened when he saw Grantaire. He had been leaning against the sun-yellow wall, seeming to sag under the weight of whatever words he’d been holding in for the time it took Grantaire to get out of bed. Hadn’t that wall been blue yesterday? Enjolras must have changed it – he was the only one in the house with a Transfiguration wing – though Grantaire couldn’t fathom why he might have done so. It wasn’t really important, he supposed.

“Oh, thank the gods, finally!” Courfeyrac exclaimed, which seemed a little much. It had only been a few minutes. He, too, appeared different than the last time Grantaire had seen him, though this change was more expected. Evidently, the man had decided that this was a good day to glamour his hair a shocking shade of pink, though it retained its natural curl. He also seemed to have constellations of actual stars winking across his cheeks, where freckles usually spanned. “Listen, there’s a new case for you.” A case? It took him a moment to realize his housemate was referring to his rather informal work as a charm-breaker. When he did, he fixed Courfeyrac with a look of disbelief.

“That’s it?” he demanded. “Just a case? This couldn’t have waited like an hour until-” Courfeyrac cut him off with a wave of the hand.

“No, not just a case,” he corrected. “Cosette will explain it all. She’s downstairs right now, and she _really_ needs your help.” Then, absurdly, he giggled.

“What-”

“Cosette will explain it!” he repeated, pushing at Grantaire’s shoulders. His nose twitched with the obvious effort of holding in another bout of laughter. Grantaire traded a look with the hawk on his arm. Or rather, he turned to look at it, but it had already spread its wings and taken off from his shoulder, winging ahead down the hall.

“Thanks, Apollo,” he muttered, then sighed and followed after it, Courfeyrac trailing behind.

It turned out it wasn’t Cosette who needed the charm broken. Or at least, the charm was not on Cosette. It was on a young man with huge calf-like eyes, a mess of dark curls, and a shirt so threadbare Grantaire could only assume it was magic that kept it from disintegrating off his body. He gave his name as Marius. Marius was hopelessly, ridiculously, _enchantedly_ in love with Cosette. He stared at her with a huge, dopey smile and needed Courfeyrac to snap under his nose three times to get his attention.

“Marius, this is Grantaire,” he said, with as much patience as he was capable of. “He’s going to help you out.”

“Help me? With what?” The man looked truly bewildered. Automatically, he looked back to Cosette for support or explanation. She gave him an encouraging sort-of smile that looked tired to Grantaire’s eyes, then turned and motioned for Grantaire to follow her. He did so, though the hawk stayed behind, perching on the back of the couch to inspect the dazed newcomer.

In the kitchen, Cosette let out a sigh so heavy it might have been building for years.

“Please tell me you can do something about this.” Grantaire couldn’t help a small grin, looking from his friend back out to the living room and the stranger that occupied it. He arched an eyebrow at her.

“I mean, I don’t normally do assassinations, ‘Sette, but-”

“He’s in love with me,” she interrupted. He smirked.

“Yes. I’d noticed.”

“Not in the natural way.” She ran a hand through her blonde hair and leaned back against the counter, letting her eyes flutter closed for a moment. She looked so exhausted that Grantaire gave in and dropped the smile, adopting a more solemn countenance. He gave her a moment to collect herself, then said tentatively, “Do you know how it happened?” She didn’t answer at first, just stretched her arms out behind her, running her hands along the sides of the countertop. Grantaire recognized this as a sign that she needed something just to hold and delivered into her hands a large mug of tea which, judging by the temperature, had been made and then abandoned by either Courfeyrac or Combeferre less than an hour ago. Cosette grasped it firmly in her hands and did seem to relax a little. She looked up at him.

“It was about two weeks ago, I think,” she began. “I ran into him along the street with Father. He seemed perfectly normal at the time. Well-mannered. Charming, if a bit awkward. We parted amicably, and I figured I likely wouldn’t see him again. But then he just kept… turning up.” She drummed her fingers against the mug as she explained how she’d been surprised but pleased when she ran into Marius again in the park a few days later, and then less surprised when she’d spotted him at the market. It hadn’t seemed strange until he walked into the Musain, trying a little too hard to make it look like a coincidence.

“He didn’t say anything,” she explained. “Just came in, wearing some ridiculously fancy jacket. It seemed to be a big deal to him – not in a cocky way. There was a weird urgency to it, like he _needed_ someone to see it. He needed… me to see it.”

“Wonder what happened to it,” Grantaire muttered offhandedly, pulling off his glove to stretch his fingers. Cosette gave him a look that said he was missing the point. “Okay, so, then what.”

“Nothing, for a little while. He was there every day after that, a little longer each time. Sometimes I would look up and he was just, like, staring at me. It made me uncomfortable, but I tried to ignore it. Then, one day, he tried to follow me home.” Caught up in her explanation, she absently sipped the cold tea. Her nose wrinkled slightly, but she wasn’t distracted. “He… wasn’t that persistent, I guess. He wandered off after a few turns. But the next day, I decided to stay late, until Baz came in.”

Bahorel was naturally nocturnal, so he kept the café open late, for the night crowd. Apparently, after offering to ‘take care of him for you’ (Cosette said no), he called Bossuet to come pick her up. And, in a highly atypical stroke of luck, it turned out that Bossuet knew Marius from school.

“He managed to convince me that this behavior was not normal for Marius, and that there must be something magical going on. From there, it wasn’t hard to get Marius to admit he’d eaten something that day that he doesn’t, on reflection, actually remembered buying. A gift from someone, he thought, but he can’t seem to say who. He remembers going outside, thinking it tasted a bit weird, and then he saw me and ‘all else became nothing’.”

The amount of tired wryness she managed to force into those air quotes was truly inspiring. Grantaire patted her shoulder sympathetically, keeping his face carefully blank as he could not remotely predict what expression it would form if he let it.

“You’ve really been going through it,” he summarized. Cosette nodded.

“Since then, he’s been following me around like a lost duckling. I can’t even get mad at him; he can’t help it. He can even be charming, at some moments. It’s just… I’ve never in my life felt so _observed_. I didn’t know it could feel so much like a kind of confinement – a bird in a menagerie. I feel like _I’ve_ been cursed.” She stopped abruptly, eyes jerking up to meet Grantaire’s with a panicked regret.

“Wait, no, I didn’t mean…. Souls, I’m sorry. I know it’s not the same.” Grantaire huffed out a grim laugh. He covered his friend’s hand with his and squeezed reassuringly.

“It’s fine,” he promised. “Really. I haven’t cornered the market on misfortune, Sette. Your feelings are valid.”

“Still-”

“It’s _fine_.”

They lapsed into a mostly comfortable silence. Cosette finally set down her mug and propped her elbows on the counter, looking quietly around the room. Grantaire followed her gaze, eyeing the familiar space – the butterfly windchimes, the bundles of herbs hanging from hooks on the walls, the colorful tablecloth patched together with a dozen stitched sigils for house-and-hearth charms. It was hard to feel bad in this bright, warm room.

They couldn’t stay long, of course. The hawk eventually lost interest in Marius and came in search of Grantaire. The bird cawed at him, flapping its wings in apparent irritation, as he scrambled to get his glove back on.

“Always yelling at me, you are,” Grantaire complained. “You’d think we would be past that by now.” He heard Cosette let out a soft laugh, but when he glanced at her, there was a sudden and deep melancholy in her gaze. She shuffled closer, and the hawk allowed her to stroke its feathers with a light finger. Grantaire didn’t speak, though there was a lot he was tempted to say. He had been meaning to ask why Cosette didn’t switch shifts with Bahorel more often. Enjolras often stopped by the Musain at night, and Grantaire knew Cosette missed her brother.

“How are you guys, anyway?” Cosette asked softly after a minute. Grantaire shrugged, then gave her the most reassuring smile he could muster.

“We’re alright. I mean, yeah, things are tough. But me and Apollo…” He gestured to the bird. “We’re fighters, aren’t we?” She laughed, and it was a slightly happier sound this time. Still, when Grantaire happened to glance at the mug she’d abandoned, he was not particularly surprised to see, in place of the expected dregs of leaves at the bottom of the cup, the tiny sprout of a live tea plant. It wasn’t a particularly healthy-looking thing; the leaf buds were a darker, more mottled shade than they should have been. He frowned but didn’t comment. Instead, he proffered his free arm to her.

“Anyway, we’d better get back to Marius, shouldn’t we?”

“Oh, yeah, right.” With a final sigh, she looped her arm through his, and together they turned to face whatever trouble awaited them.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've made it this far, thank you! Feedback is always appreciated, so feel free to let me know what you think.  
> Also, sorry Enj doesn't technically make an appearance in this chapter. You'll be hearing from him soon, I promise.


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